


Mademoiselle Nelidova Versus the World; or, How to Succeed at Court Without Really Trying

by gersaint



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Russian Royalty RPF
Genre: Character Study, Female-Centric, Gen, Journalism, Nonfiction, Platonic Relationships, Politics, creative nonfiction - Freeform, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:08:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26393146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gersaint/pseuds/gersaint
Summary: The story of Russia's most unexpected star, as reported in the Weekly Gazette, December 1796.(Creative nonfiction. With citations!)
Relationships: Paul I of Russia/Ekaterina Nelidova, Paul I of Russia/Maria Feodorovna
Kudos: 2





	Mademoiselle Nelidova Versus the World; or, How to Succeed at Court Without Really Trying

If you ask Ekaterina Ivanovna Nelidova what she thinks about being the third most influential person in Russia after the Emperor and the Empress, she might humor you with a humble shrug and a saying about the inscrutable designs of God. Then, immediately bored with the subject of her own fame, she’ll turn back to her harp and ask if you’d like to join her in a duet. She can play anything from good old-fashioned Bach, to something more contemporary like Mozart, to a thousand lesser-known composers, and her voice – though she has no professional training outside of what she learned in her days at the Institute for Noble Maidens¹ – is clear, bright, and pleasant. Strumming the harp, letting the music fill the room, Mademoiselle Nelidova seems completely at ease. You’d never guess how preoccupied she is with all the troubles that arise from being the Emperor’s best friend and the Empress’s right-hand woman.

Take the recent affair of the Order of St. George. Last month, in one of his first acts as Emperor of All the Russias, His Majesty Paul I announced his intention to abolish the Order, which had been created by the late Empress Catherine, the Emperor’s dearly departed mother, as the highest military honor in the realm.² Something of a scandal ensued: various members of high society saw this as an unpardonable snub against the country’s bravest military veterans who had proven themselves in the Turkish wars. And this was practically on the eve of the Feast of St. George, no less. Some insinuated that the Emperor was motivated by nothing more than a peevish reaction against his mother’s legacy. The Emperor, for his part, insisted on the need to reduce unnecessary ceremonial expenses, pointed to the lack of necessity for military honors in peacetime, and accused his critics of disloyalty. Not even Her Majesty the Empress Consort Maria Feodorova dared contradict his arguments.³

Now it was Mlle. Nelidova’s turn to dare. “In the name of God, Sire,” she implored him, “don’t show such contempt for the Order, which was established for the sake of your own subjects’ bravery. Think how much blood has been spilled for this! Take pity on those who’ve given up everything for their country only to see how little their sovereign respects them!” She reminded the Emperor of his duty to his people, of how he couldn’t afford to appear small and petty before his subjects. “Forgive me if I’m being too bold here, but as long as I’m your friend I won’t shy away from telling you what I think about everything that has to do with your glory and dignity. For as long as I live,” she concluded, “I consider it my duty.”⁴

And so the Order held its parade and ceremonial banquet as usual this year. The animated conversation and triumphant music quieted down when the royal carriage stopped outside the pillars of the church where the function was taking place. A few gasps and whispers issued from the crowd; some people elbowed each other and pointed; others sat very still, unsure of what to expect. Smiling and waving a white-gloved hand, the Emperor himself alighted from the carriage as the hush dissolved into raucous cheering and toasts to His Majesty’s health.⁵

*

_Mlle. Nelidova while a student at Smolny. Portrait by Dmitri Levitzky._

Nothing in Mlle. Nelidova’s early years suggested anything more than a quiet existence in the provinces – complete with a mildly advantageous marriage to an aging gentleman of rank; a household composed of children, servants, and miscellaneous spinster aunts; and nothing but borrowed novels and occasional excursions to the capital to make life interesting. The daughter of a lieutenant, she was born on 12 December 1758 in Klemyatino, her family’s estate in Smolensk province. At the time, her family owned five hundred serfs;⁶ the Emperor recently offered to bestow two thousand more, but Mlle. Nelidova protested until he reduced it to five hundred.⁷ She has one sister and five brothers, one of whom was made adjutant-general last month.⁸

The first years of her childhood went by in a peaceful haze. The rhythms of provincial life, her nurses’ stories about enchanted woods and fairy princes,⁹ the daisy-dotted meadows and birch forests of the countryside – all instilled in her a love for nature.¹⁰ She still carries it with her, despite having lived in the capital for most of her life now.

That all changed when her mother took her to the newly established Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens in St. Petersburg in 1765.¹¹ Not even seven years old yet, Mlle. Nelidova was to spend the next twelve years living at the Institute, receiving an education that followed the liberal ideas of Empress Catherine. She found herself in a Grecian-style building on the banks of the icy Neva, far away from the flowery green countryside. Gone was the familiar, noisy company of siblings and nannies; here she was just one bewildered little girl among many, watched over by the headmistress, Madame Delafon, and a coterie of French and German ladies who didn’t speak a word of Russian.¹²

Life at the Institute, then as now, was as regimented as a cadet school. In those days, Empress Catherine was working on her grand scheme of elevating Russian culture; she wanted her girls to learn the art of sophistication so that they could pass it on to their children once they became wives and mothers. The curriculum, which still mostly follows the parameters set by its founder, goes beyond literacy and handicrafts: there are languages such as French, German, Italian; philosophical and scientific subjects such as theology, mathematics, history, geography, physics, and architecture; the arts of music, dance, drawing, and sculpture; and finally heraldry, which is considered especially useful knowledge for the daughters of even the most minor and unambitious nobles. Even the students’ free time is spent reading edifying treatises and novels.¹³

And yet, despite the austere outline of Empress Catherine’s educational plan, an atmosphere of friendship and sisterhood prevails at Smolny. Lessons take the form of genteel conversations like the kind one might hear at a Parisian salon. The harshest punishment on the books is nothing more than being scolded in front of one’s classmates – though even this can be mortifying for shy, self-conscious girls. Although the teachers aren’t supposed to show their emotions or reveal much about their personal lives, the students themselves are encouraged to speak their minds and confide in their teachers if need be.¹⁴

On Sundays and holidays, the students put on concerts and performances to audiences of curious courtiers; they also hold balls, where they have the freedom to dance with young cadets. Rehearsals for theatrical occasions are taken very seriously – a good memory and a talent for acting are, after all, advantages at court.¹⁵ It was at Smolny that the young Mlle. Nelidova first came to love the theater. At fifteen, she was the leading lady in a production of Pergolesi’s comic opera _The Servant Turned Mistress_. A poet wrote an ode in honor of her performance, and the artist Dmitri Levitzky (who still lives in St. Petersburg today, sadly neglected by high society) painted a portrait of her in character as Serpina.¹⁶ The portrait shows her in a gray dress with pink accents and a gossamer apron, striking a ballet pose; the pastoral landscape behind her mingles with the sky, and far in the distance lies the ghostly outline of a fairy-tale castle. The young student’s face glows with cheerful artlessness, but there’s something of a knowing look in her eyes, too. Mlle. Nelidova had only three years left at Smolny. It wouldn’t be long until she had to leave behind the dance lessons and heraldic tomes to step out beyond the Institute’s white walls for the first time.

Mlle. Nelidova was among the Institute’s first graduating class in 1776.¹⁷ Today, many of its former students remember their schoolgirl days fondly. Smolny represents to them a kind and gentle fairyland removed from the cruelties and debauchery of the world.¹⁸ In a way, it’s not so different from the lush, innocent countryside which Mlle. Nelidova saw receding from her view in the carriage window when she first left Klemyatino for St. Petersburg more than thirty years ago.

*

_Empress Maria Feodorovna, whom Mlle. Nelidova has served faithfully since 1776. Portrait by Jean-Louis Voille._

She was now eighteen years old. All her studies completed, nothing remained between her and the world – no careful hands to guide her by the ribbons of her dress, no confident voice to tell her the day’s lesson plan. The doors of the dollhouse were thrown open; the world – with all its spoken and unspoken expectations, orders of precedence, tantalizingly painted strongboxes of secrets, and unfamiliar doors – stood waiting for her.

Through the good graces and good connections of the Institute ladies, right after she graduated she was installed as a lady-in-waiting in the household of Grand Duchess Natalia Alekseyevna, the wife of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, who was at the time twenty-two. Upon Her Highness’s untimely death just a few months later, Mlle. Nelidova was transferred to the entourage of the new Grand Duchess, the seventeen-year-old Maria Feodorovna.¹⁹ She had no family or friends at court, but she never complained; and the head of Maria Feodorovna’s entourage, Countess Rumyantseva, was a fair and just superior.²⁰ Despite her lack of experience, Mlle. Nelidova was quick on the uptake. She took care of Maria Feodorovna’s hoard of exotic jewelry, never letting anything tarnish or go missing.²¹ Nothing in her appearance or manner dissatisfied her mistress’s simple tastes – not even the flamboyant green dresses that she likes to wear.²² Most importantly, she learned to make a point of sticking by her mistress no matter what, transcending all gossip and intrigue, something she still lives by to this day in spite of how high she’s risen.²³

During those early years, Mlle. Nelidova got to know her noble mistress well, but the barriers of rank and personality meant that she couldn’t yet claim to be her friend. Maria Feodorovna was pragmatic where Mlle. Nelidova was idealistic, and preferred to keep a healthy distance between herself and her court ladies.²⁴ But although the two of them have only grown close in recent years and under the most unusual circumstances, they had some things in common from the start. Both feel at home in nature, as can be seen in the flower-filled gardens of the royal estate at Pavlovsk. Both women have simple tastes compared to the rest of the court: Maria Feodorovna is content as long as there’s a bouquet of flowers and a clavichord in her room,²⁵ and all Mlle. Nelidova needs to be happy is her trusty harp, some paper and colored pencils to draw with, and a few good books.²⁶

*

_The Emperor, then still the Grand Duke, in Italy. Portrait by I. Pulman after Pompeo Batoni._

Then there was the Grand Duke. At first he was little more than a shadow to Mlle. Nelidova – a shadow whom she saw only from a distance when he visited Maria Feodorovna’s apartments, walked by in the halls of the Winter Palace, or appeared on state occasions resplendent in his princely regalia. Whenever they chanced to meet, Mlle. Nelidova would curtsy to him, following etiquette. He, in reply, would grace her with a deep bow that betrayed something of his chivalrous, old-fashioned sensibilities. And then he’d disappear again, leaving her with a host of idle questions that she knew better than to voice to her taciturn mistress.

That began to change when the grand ducal couple set off on a tour through the kingdoms, duchies, and republics of western Europe from September 1781 to October 1782. A trusted member of Maria Feodorovna’s entourage, Mlle. Nelidova went alone on the journey and found herself farther away from home than she’d ever dreamed of being. As the traveling party wended its way through Austria, Italy, France, the Low Countries, and the Holy Roman Empire, Mlle. Nelidova waited on her mistress, packed and unpacked countless suitcases, made the acquaintance of foreign servant girls and milkmaids, and saw the sun rise on unfamiliar horizons.

Life on the road put her in closer proximity to Grand Duke Paul, and she began to see him in a new light. In Vienna, while taking a break from her duties of tending to her mistress after the latter had taken to bed with a brief illness, she got to hear the Grand Duke singing a duet with the Holy Roman Emperor himself.²⁷ At another point of the journey, in Venice, the grand ducal couple received a carnivalesque reception that lived up to the city’s reputation.²⁸ She noticed how the fireworks, bergamasques, and cheering crowds enlivened the Grand Duke and made him lose the formal, austere demeanor he usually affected at the Russian court. And on the last leg of the trip, the traveling party stopped at Maria Feodorovna’s ancestral home in Württemberg. Relaxing in the warm and welcoming atmosphere that her mistress’s family created for their exalted guests, going on excursions to the surrounding forests and mountains, and spending evenings drinking tea by the fire, Mlle. Nelidova saw Grand Duke Paul at his best: laughing, joking, discoursing on philosophy with hardly a care in the world.²⁹

These moments of levity highlighted even more, in Mlle. Nelidova’s mind, the tensions that she knew existed between Grand Duke Paul and his mother Empress Catherine back home in St. Petersburg. Though he was still a young man, the Grand Duke had already lived through the plot of more than one Shakespearean tragedy. When he was only eight years old, his father had been deposed and murdered; his mother had – as he saw it – usurped his inheritance by taking the throne herself.³⁰ His first wife, in whose household Mlle. Nelidova had once served, had died young in childbed; his memory of her had been tainted by the discovery of a few unlucky love letters sent to his best friend, Andrei Razumovsky, who was exiled to the provinces without getting a chance to explain himself.³¹ And now the Grand Duke found himself kept at arm’s length from politics, no matter how many military treatises and policy suggestions he submitted for his mother’s consideration.³²

Such circumstances would’ve put a strain on anyone. In France, Queen Marie Antoinette asked the Grand Duke whether it was true that he couldn’t trust any of the courtiers that Empress Catherine had appointed for his retinue – as opposed to those whom he and his wife had chosen for themselves. “I wouldn’t dare to have so much as a poodle that was devoted to me,” he replied bitterly. “He’d never leave Paris, as my mother would have him thrown into the Seine with a stone attached to his neck.”³³

During this strange, exciting, liminal time in their lives – a blur of formal receptions, dinner parties, excursions to the city and the country – Mlle. Nelidova and Grand Duke Paul came to find that they had much in common. By the time the traveling party returned to Russia, the two of them could honestly call each other friends. Mlle. Nelidova sympathized with the Grand Duke, seeing him as a lonely prince without a kingdom,³⁴ while he respected her outspokenness and candor.³⁵ She admired his love of honor, courage, chivalry, and other storybook values;³⁶ he was captivated by her conversation, which could go from witty repartee to talk of high-flown virtue.³⁷ They laughed at the same jokes and shared a mutual interest in theater and music – Mlle. Nelidova helped organize informal concerts, dances, and performances at the royal estates of Gatchina and Pavlovsk, and the Grand Duke occasionally joined in himself.³⁸

They even obsessed over the same metaphysical phenomena. The Grand Duke once gave Mlle. Nelidova a book and told her to open it at random to find mystical meanings. “Forgive me for all this silliness,” he added. “Go easy on me, because I love you more than I love myself.”³⁹ And before departing for a brief military expedition during the war with Sweden in 1788, he wrote her a heartfelt note: “Know that I’ll be thinking of you in the hour of my death.”⁴⁰

*

Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the whispering began. Maria Feodorovna was distraught to find out that her loyal, diligent lady-in-waiting was apparently carrying on an affair with her beloved husband. She complained to Empress Catherine, who reacted with her usual cold practicality: she held up a mirror and said archly, “Look how beautiful you are, compared to that little monster!”⁴¹

At the time, the court was abuzz with rumors of indecency, but Mlle. Nelidova maintains that her feelings for Emperor Paul have always been purely platonic, even familial – she almost thinks of him as a sister more than anything else.⁴² Having spent most of her life in the monastic atmosphere of Smolny, Mlle. Nelidova has never expressed any interest in love affairs, and seems content to live her life in a spinsterly idyll devoid of any romantic attachments to men.⁴³ The Emperor similarly denies any impropriety in their relationship. During a bout of illness in the autumn of 1790 that led him to fear he’d never get a chance to ascend the throne himself, he even wrote to Empress Catherine asking her to look after Mlle. Nelidova after his death. Dismayed by the attacks on her reputation, he added, “I swear by all that’s sacred, our friendship is holy and tender, but also innocent and pure.”⁴⁴

But even besides ordinary jealousy, Maria Feodorovna had other reasons to worry about the role Mlle. Nelidova was playing. The Grand Duke had long been alienated from Empress Catherine, harboring a thousand resentments toward her, and in the last years of her reign the tensions between mother and son became more apparent. There were even rumors that the Empress was planning to exclude him from the succession in favor of his eldest son. Not wanting her husband or herself to suddenly remain without a political future, Maria Feodorovna insisted on a policy of appeasement and civility when dealing with the formidable Empress. Mlle. Nelidova, on the other hand, urged the Grand Duke to be assertive, to stand up for himself against Empress Catherine and her notorious favorites.⁴⁵ “She’s the one who enables his behavior,” complained Maria Feodorovna of her wayward lady-in-waiting. “She tells him to stick to his guns in order to intimidate the Empress, even though all that can do is distance him even further from Her Majesty. The Grand Duke should rather obey and respect his mother if he wants to achieve anything.”⁴⁶ It seemed that Maria Feodorovna’s pragmatism could never be reconciled with Mlle. Nelidova’s eccentricity.

Matters gradually worsened. The Grand Duke shunned his wife, spending all his time with Mlle. Nelidova.⁴⁷ When he fell ill in the autumn of 1790, there was a brief respite as Mlle. Nelidova apologized for the scandal that had been caused in her name, though not by her own will, and the Grand Duchess was relieved to hear it. But none of that helped a jot once the Grand Duke recovered. He went so far as to accuse the Grand Duchess of plotting against him while he was indisposed and dismissed several members of her entourage.⁴⁸

No longer willing to watch others being mistreated because of her, Mlle. Nelidova asked Empress Catherine permission to leave court in the summer of 1792. The Empress only granted her request the following September, but the damage had already been done.⁴⁹ Once the Grand Duke heard of it, he blamed Maria Feodorovna for driving Mlle. Nelidova away. Having berated the Grand Duchess, he stormed into Mlle. Nelidova’s chamber but found his anger matched by hers. Mlle. Nelidova insisted the idea had been all hers and that mind couldn’t be changed.⁵⁰ Her suitcases were already packed; a carriage was waiting outside the gates of the Winter Palace to take her away. Where was she going? To Smolny, of course. Some of the Institute’s graduates occasionally came back to live there if they felt too much at odds with the world, and Mlle. Nelidova had been longing to return for some time. Once settled, she didn’t take on any official duties, though she did provide support and company to her old friends and the new students. It proved a welcome change from the hectic vagaries of court life.

Mlle. Nelidova didn’t completely cut herself off from contact with high society, however. She kept up a correspondence with Prince Aleksandr Borisovich Kurakin, that famous dandy who can often be seen dashing through the snowy St. Petersburg streets in his ornate carriage. As a friend of Mlle. Nelidova and the Grand Duke, Prince Kurakin gave her news of the court and commiserated with her about their mutual friend’s troubles. “My heart rebels when I imagine what’s happening in his soul,” Mlle. Nelidova said shortly after her departure. “For a long time now I’ve been trying to rid my heart of all pity for him. But you, my dear prince – please try to be more lenient with him, try to be more cool-headed than I was. If you’re patient with him, it’ll make him realize his mistakes sooner – he’s kind at heart, and not immune from the pangs of conscience.”⁵¹

Prince Kurakin couldn’t understand, however, why anyone would voluntarily trade the glittering halls of the Winter Palace for an austere chamber at the Institute. Mlle. Nelidova laughed. “I can find a thousand different ways to amuse and enjoy myself around the people who brought me up, whom I deeply respect and who’ll never lose their affection for me in turn,” she assured him. “I’ll also have the pleasure of seeing some of my young relatives who are students there.” Besides, she was no longer a schoolgirl who knew nothing of politics or heartbreak. She’d seen enough of the world now to lose any illusions she might’ve had about its glamour and gold. “Severing some of my ties with the world won’t make me so unhappy as you imagine – the world never could treat me fairly, anyway. Or rather, didn’t want to.”⁵²

*

_Mlle. Nelidova at court. Portrait by Jean-Louis Voille._

Over the next three years, Mlle. Nelidova’s life at Smolny returned to its former quiet rhythms. She busied herself with prayer and charity, kept up a voluminous correspondence with her friends outside the Institute, and sat by the fireplace reading novels and poetry.⁵³ Then, one gloomy evening in early November, news arrived from the Winter Palace that Empress Catherine had died of a stroke. Mlle. Nelidova hardly had time to process her feelings or to comfort the grieving Institute ladies: her royal friend, now no longer Grand Duke Paul Petrovich but Emperor Paul I, requested her presence at court as soon as possible.

The Empress died on 6 November 1796. Just five days before that, Mlle. Nelidova had written to Prince Kurakin complaining of the emotional toll their mutual friend’s behavior was taking on her. “Let him find some other friend who can offer him their whole heart, the way I’ve offered mine! The Grand Duke’s happiness will always be the subject of my most fervent prayers, but that’s all I can or want to do at this point,” she declared. “Don’t you think he understands how his heartless nonsense makes me feel? Oh, my dear prince, don’t try to defend the Grand Duke to me now. I admire his noble heart, and so I feel insurmountable revulsion whenever he contradicts his own nature.”⁵⁴ But now she knew it was time to put her pride in her pocket and respond to the imperial summons.

When they met again, the new Emperor told her plainly how sorry he felt for having driven her away with his difficult moods. Now that he’d finally gained his life’s greatest wish and ascended the throne after decades of waiting, the Emperor knew that he needed Mlle. Nelidova more than ever.⁵⁵ She was the only person who understood him fully and was never afraid of calling him out on his mistakes – and for an all-powerful autocrat, honesty is both hard to come by and absolutely indispensable.

There was another person eager to see her: the Empress Maria Feodorovna, who was named benefactress of Smolny last month. On a recent visit to meet with the aging Mme. Delafon, Her Majesty stopped by Mlle. Nelidova’s apartments at the Institute.⁵⁶ Indeed, the story of how Mlle. Nelidova made amends with her former mistress is another testament to the unpredictable nature of courtly politics. Back in 1793, Mlle. Nelidova’s self-imposed exile to Smolny mostly extinguished the gossiping, rumors, and scandal that had been circulating throughout high society. Things quieted down. Relieved and never one to hold a grudge, Maria Feodorovna personally offered to make peace with her former lady-in-waiting, and Mlle. Nelidova readily agreed.⁵⁷ Over the next few years, the two women grew closer than ever before: they exchanged gifts of jewels, asked about each other’s health, and wrote to each other frequently.⁵⁸

But more than just striking up an unexpected friendship, they also formed a sort of political alliance to help the then Grand Duchess and her husband weather the tense environment at court during the last years of Empress Catherine’s reign. Sidelined by the Empress and shocked by the events that had broken out in France in July 1789, the Grand Duke was often prone to bouts of suspicion and gloom. “The Grand Duke imagines revolution is always just around the corner. Everywhere he turns, he manages to find Jacobins,” observed Count Feodor Rostopchin in 1794, his longtime friend who was recently appointed adjutant general and grand marshal of the court.⁵⁹ Mlle. Nelidova was well aware of this. “You know our friend,” she remarked to Prince Kurakin in May 1796. “You know how when some new impression takes hold of his heart, it tyrannizes over all his thoughts and plans.”⁶⁰ The Grand Duke’s relationship with Empress Catherine deteriorated even more; the increasingly paranoid and bitter atmosphere at court that this engendered brought Mlle. Nelidova and the Grand Duchess closer together.⁶¹ Offering support and advice from her serene hideaway at the Institute, Mlle. Nelidova once again proved herself as loyal and attentive as she’d been while serving at court. And so it was that, by the fall of 1796, the former lady-in-waiting became an indispensable friend and confidante to the lady she’d once served.

Today, Mlle. Nelidova divides her time between the Institute and the Winter Palace, traveling to the former when she needs a break from the court and to the latter when her imperial friends require her presence. Her apartments at the palace are cozy and decorated with various trinkets ranging from porcelain figurines to miniature paintings. Nonetheless, she declines to settle down permanently in them because she knows how quickly one’s situation at court might change.⁶² When staying at Smolny, she often receives visits from the Emperor and the Empress, to her great pride and the amazement of the younger Institute ladies.⁶³

Her most important political duty lies in interceding for people who’ve fallen out of favor with the Emperor. With her talk of justice, virtue, and other exalted yearnings of the soul, she encourages the Emperor to be his best self and not to forget the generosity and kindness that properly befit a monarch.⁶⁴ Though she’s more outspoken than Empress Maria Feodorovna, both of them work together in their own ways to guide the Emperor on a path of virtue.⁶⁵

Even the usually thankless court finds itself grateful for Mlle. Nelidova’s presence and influence. On a recent occasion, the Emperor lost his patience with a courtier at a ball and began to vent his ire, but Mlle. Nelidova pulled him by the coat-tails and nudged him with her elbow until he got the hint and softened his demeanor. At this, vice-admiral Aleksandr Semyonovich Shishkov, an experienced military man not particularly given to exaggeration, exclaimed, “Oh, if only all tsars – especially stubborn and hot-tempered ones – had a Nelidova about them!”⁶⁶

At thirty-eight, Mlle. Nelidova has come a long way from her days of acting in comic operas and dancing quadrilles with young cadets. Twenty years have passed since she first came to court. But despite the lavish apartments with a view of the River Neva, the gifts of pearl necklaces and tea sets, and the newfound fame, she hasn’t forgotten the lessons she learned at Smolny. Even now – perhaps especially now – she prefers to maintain an aloof, almost mystical detachment from the world. “I’ve seen for myself how worthless it is,” she says, “and I’ve learned not to make my own happiness dependent on its judgments.”⁶⁷

❧

**Endnotes**

  1. Roderick E. McGrew, _Paul I of Russia_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 170.
  2. E. M. Almedingen, _So Dark a Stream: A Study of the Emperor Paul I of Russia_ (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1959), 164.


  1. Ibid., 164.
  2. E. S. Shumigorskii, _Ekaterina Ivanovna Nelidova_ , 1902 (Moscow: Zakharov Press, 2008), 95-96.


  1. Almedingen, 165.
  2. Shumigorskii, 11.
  3. McGrew, 173.
  4. Ibid., 200.
  5. Shumigorskii, 11-12.
  6. Ibid., 28-29.
  7. Ibid., 12.
  8. Ibid., 13-14.
  9. Ibid., 16.
  10. Ibid., 15-16.
  11. Ibid., 19-20.
  12. Ibid., 24.
  13. Ibid., 23.
  14. Ibid., 18.
  15. Ibid., 26.
  16. Ibid., 27.
  17. Almedingen, 115.
  18. Ibid., 114.
  19. McGrew, 173.
  20. Shumigorskii, 28-29.
  21. McGrew, 124.
  22. Ibid., 173.
  23. Ibid., 123.
  24. Ibid., 125.
  25. Ibid., 139.
  26. Ibid., 39-43.
  27. Ibid., 91-95.
  28. Ibid., 111, 149.
  29. Ibid., 136.
  30. Ibid., 170.
  31. Ibid., 171.
  32. Ibid.
  33. Ibid., 170.
  34. Ibid.
  35. Shumigorskii, 40.
  36. McGrew, 171.
  37. Shumigorskii, 43.
  38. McGrew, 170-171.
  39. Ibid., 172-173.
  40. Shumigorskii, 41.
  41. McGrew, 180; Shumigorskii, 73.
  42. Shumigorskii, 73.
  43. McGrew, 174-175.
  44. Ibid., 175-176.
  45. Ibid., 177-178.
  46. Almedingen, 123-124.
  47. Shumigorskii, 59.
  48. Ibid., 63-64.
  49. Almedingen, 162.
  50. Shumigorskii, 87-89.
  51. Ibid., 91.
  52. Ibid., 93.
  53. McGrew, 178.
  54. Almedingen, 163.
  55. Shumigorskii, 75.
  56. Ibid., 79.
  57. Ibid., 78.
  58. Ibid., 101.
  59. Ibid., 100.
  60. Almedingen, 119.
  61. Ibid., 163.
  62. Shumigorskii, 107.
  63. Ibid., 64.



**Bibliography**

Almedingen, E. M. _So Dark a Stream: A Study of the Emperor Paul I of Russia_. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1959.

McGrew, Roderick E. _Paul I of Russia._ Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

Shumigorskii, E. S. _Ekaterina Ivanovna Nelidova_. 1902. Moscow: Zakharov Press, 2008.


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